First Parish Church in Plymouth

First Parish Church in Plymouth is a historic Unitarian Universalist church at the base of Burial Hill on the town square off Leyden Street in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The congregation was founded in 1620 by the Pilgrims in Plymouth. The current building was constructed in 1899.

First Parish Church in Plymouth
The current First Parish Church building, built in 1899, in Plymouth is located downtown on Town Square at the base of Burial Hill (on the right)
Location	12 Church St., Plymouth, Massachusetts
Country	USA
Denomination	Unitarian Universalist
Membership	64 (2016)
Website	firstparishplymouth.org
History
Status	Active
Founded	1606
Architecture
Heritage designation	National Register of Historic Places
Designated	2014
Architectural type	Neo-Romanesque
Years built	1899
Clergy
Minister(s)	Rev. Art Lavoie

History

Congregation

The congregation was founded in the English community of Scrooby in 1606 by the Pilgrims, a group of Protestant Christians. After they emigrated to North America in 1620, the Separatist congregation established a church in Plymouth which became a parish church of Massachusetts' state church, the Congregational church. Eventually, a schism developed in 1801, when much of the congregation adopted Unitarianism along with many of the other state churches in Massachusetts; the Congregationalist dissenters broke away to form the Church of the Pilgrimage. All state churches were disaffiliated with the government by 1834.[1] The congregation is currently affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist Association and has 64 members as of 2016.[2]

Buildings

Originally, the congregation held Christian services on the Mayflower and then at a fort on Burial Hill from 1621 until 1648. The fort was also used for other colony events including meetings of the Plymouth General Court. In 1648 the first of four church buildings on the town square was constructed. Later churches were built in 1684, 1744, and 1831. Hartwell, Richardson & Driver designed the current Romanesque-style building, completed 1899, which replaced the 1831 wooden Gothic structure.[3] The 1899 building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2014. It has Tiffany stained glass windows illustrating the Pilgrim story. The sanctuary features carved quarter-sawn oak and is one of the finest examples of hammer beam construction in the United States.

Gallery

• 
  Burial Hill Fort, ca. 1621, housed the original church in Plymouth
• 
  William Harlow House, built in 1677 in Plymouth, made of timbers from the Burial Hill Fort, (meeting place of First Parish Church)
• 
  1683 First Parish Meeting House
• 
  1744 First Parish Meeting House
• 
  1831 First Parish Meeting House
• 
  1899 First Parish Meeting House
• 
  First Parish Church in Town Square, ca. 1905
• 
  recreation of Plymouth's fort/first church meeting house at Plimoth Plantation
• 
• 
  First Parish is at the rear, while the white church to the right is the Church of the Pilgrimage
• 
  interior
• 
  Plymouth House in Shichigahama, Japan, a sister city of Plymouth, modeling after the recreated First Parish Church in Plimoth Plantation

See also

• First Parish Church (Duxbury, Massachusetts)
• Oldest churches in the United States
• National Register of Historic Places listings in Plymouth County, Massachusetts

References

1. Paul Erasmus Lauer, Church and state in New England (Johns Hopkins Press, 1892) pp. 105–107 (accessed September 20, 2009)
2. "Search Congregations". Unitarian Universalist Association. Retrieved January 14, 2011.
3. Baker, James. A Guide to Historic Plymouth. Charleston: History, 2008. ISBN 1-59629-228-8, ISBN 978-1-59629-228-4.

External links

• First Parish website
• The historical records for the First Parish Church in Plymouth are in the Andover-Harvard Theological Library at Harvard Divinity School in Cambridge, Massachusetts.